Pliny nodded, looking to Dustin, who grinned as she leaned over to kiss Elle on the forehead. “Of course, my love,” she said, stroking Elle’s blonde head. “I will fetch it for you. Welcome back. We have missed you.”
As she headed off to retrieve the broth, Curtis held Elle’s hand, smiling at her, still incredulous that he wasn’t dreaming this whole event. Elle smiled in return, caressing the big hand that held hers. He was holding her like he was never going to let go.
Ever.
Nor was she.
“You will have to tell me everything that happened since I’ve been… asleep,” she said softly. “How is Asa?”
Curtis squeezed her hand gently. “Much as you think he would be,” he said. “He is mourning Melly deeply. We all are.”
That brought tears to Elle’s eyes. “When I am feeling better, will you take me to her crypt?”
He leaned down and kissed her hand. “Of course, love,” he said. “As soon as you wish.”
Elle wiped at her eyes. “It will seem strange without her,” she said. “But she was happy when she went, Curt. That is very important to me. Melly spent so much of her life unhappy, but I know that here, with us, she was very happy.”
Curtis didn’t want her becoming emotional over Melusine and exhausting herself over something that she could not change. “Brython has been a happy place for me, too,” he said. “It brought me to you, and for that, it will always have my deepest fondness.”
“Even after Amaro’s rampage?”
“Even after.”
She watched his face, seeing that he was sincere. “That is something we must strive to forget,” she said. “I do not want it clouding what Brython has become to us. It was a terrible event, of course, but we have many happy things awaiting us here. A home and children. They will be born here, children of two worlds. Your father said that to me once.”
Curtis kissed her hand again. “He was right, in every way,” he said. “I remember when he told me that I was to marry you, and I very nearly refused. He said something to me that seems more important now than it was then. He said that he had made his mark on the marches, and with my marriage to you, it was time for me to make my own mark. I knew what he meant, or at least I thought I did, but now I think I have it figured out.”
“What do you mean?”
He smiled at her, putting her palm against his unshaven cheek. “I mean you,” he said softly. “It wasn’t that I was to make my mark on the marches. It was that you were to make your mark on me. Youarethe mark, Ellie. You aremymark. And you have given me a life I could have never imagined.”
It was a sweet thing to say. “Nor I,” she murmured. “Do you remember when we first met and I told you of the Otherworld?How the Welsh are waiting for our greatest prince to rise and free us from English tyranny?”
He grinned. “I do,” he said. “How Brython protects the gate to the Otherworld.”
She grinned because he was. “Prophecies are meant to give hope,” she said. “They are meant to give the downtrodden a reason to live, a reason to fight. I am not saying that it is a foolish legend, but I think that you have changed that prophecy.”
“How?”
“Because you have brought hope with you,” she said, her eyes glimmering with warmth. “You have given me a gift greater than any prophecy, greater than any army. You have given me yourself, Curtis de Lohr, and that is all I will ever need.”
Curtis leaned over her, touching his forehead to hers in a moment of complete and utter adoration. The love he felt for her, and she for him, had propelled them beyond prophecies and armies. It had moved them beyond English and Welsh. Now, they were on a plane that few people achieved in their lifetimes. Only the fortunate few would know what they knew. That the phoenix of hope could rise from the ashes of hate, and that love was the only thing that mattered in the end.
For Curtis and Elle, it was their calling.
And yet another legend of a great and timeless love was born.
EPILOGUE
1240 A.D.
There was awar going on in the keep of Brython.
If Christopher, Arthur, and William de Lohr had anything to say about it, they were going to capture their cousins James, Vaughn, and Westley. Sons of Rebecca, their father’s sister, it was three determined boys against three determined boys.
The battle was on.
Eleven-year-old Christopher Titus de Lohr was at the head of it. The name Christopher after his grandfather, the name Titus because his mother had liked it. He went by the name Chris sometimes, the General other times. Whatever he was called, he was all de Lohr. As his father said, he was born a man.
